BS-less Object Notation Specification 23.0 (BSON23.0)

October 29th, 2023

BSON Overview

BSON is a general purpose replacement of JSON. It is not developed with web and JavaScript 100% in mind. This specification covers the syntax of BSON. Bson can store:

• • Longs/integers (64 bit)
• • Floating points (64 bit)
• • Strings
• • Objects
• • Arrays

Specification 23.0 Overview

To summarize, BSON is the same as JSON with these notable syntax changes as of this specification.

• - No colons
• - Quotes only surround string data
• - No commas between data
• • C style comments '//'

Usage

Comments

To write comments, use '//'. All the data preceding it is ignored until the next line.

// This is a comment

Key names

In order to write data a name must be associated with it, which will be referred to as a key. The rules for the key name for BSON23 is currently:

• Only letters a-z/A-Z and underscores
• Numbers can appear only after the first letter
• No symbols... except underscores. These are valid examples of key names.

keyname      ...
key_name     ...
_key_name    ...
key123name   ...
keyname123   ...
_key_name123 ...

These are invalid examples of key names.

1keyname     ...
#key-name    ...
key-name     ...
key*name     ...

Longs

Integers are stored as 64 bit integers. These are referred to as longs. To create a long you specify the name, some whitespace, then the number.

myinteger 3

Floating points

Floating point numbers are stored as 64 bit doubles. To create a double you specify the name, some whitespace, then the number with at least one digit and one decimal point. The following are examples of valid doubles.

dec1 3.14
dec2 2.0
dec3 1.
dec4 0.
dec5 .0

These are not valid doubles.

mydecimal        5 // This is an integer
anotherdecimal   . // This is a syntax error

Strings

Strings as of this version are anything inbetween two matching quotes.

mystring "Hello World!"

Escape sequences are planned in the future.

Objects

Objects are defined with braces, '{' and '}'. Inside the braces you can put any data inside so long it follows the previously associated syntax.

person {
    first "John"
    last "Doe"
    age 33
}

Arrays

Arrays behave similarly to objects except that the name does no longer gets specified. Types in arrays do not matter. Arrays are defined with brackets, '[' and ']'.

ints [ 1 2 3 4 ]
decs [ 2.2 3.3 4.4 ]

They can also store objects

vecs [
    { x 1 y 2 }
    { x 3 y 4 }
    { x 5 y 6 }
]
people [
    {
        first "John"
        last "Doe"
        age 33
    }
    {
        first "Jane"
        lsat "Doe"
        age 32
    }
]

As mentioned, they all do not have to be the same type

array [
    4
    2.71
    "String!"
    arr2 [ 
        1 
        "Wow" 
        { x 1 y 2 } 
    ]
    obj {
        number 6
        friend "alfred"
    }
    coherently "nonsense"
]